


after everything

by angelic_ly



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: (though angst is a bit of a strong word), Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, First Kiss, M/M, pre-DDD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-09 23:04:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18926800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelic_ly/pseuds/angelic_ly
Summary: while sora sleeps, riku speaks to him. it's more for comfort than anything -- it's not like sora can hear him. after everything, though, it turns out that he could.





	after everything

**Author's Note:**

> Concept: Canon-compliant AU where Sora could hear everything happening outside while he was asleep inside the pod in 358. Riku made a habit of talking to him (which eventually leads to a confession), not knowing that Sora could hear him the whole time. After everything, on the dark margin, Sora finally tells Riku he could hear him.

it always takes him by surprise, though he supposes that it shouldn’t. it’s always been for sora. it’s always only ever been for him. so every time he finds himself standing in front of that pod again, he’s taken by surprise, though he shouldn’t be.

no matter how hard he tries to stop himself from doing it, inevitably he starts talking to him. sora’s his best friend; what should he expect? even if he can’t reply, riku can’t hold himself back.

and that’s how it starts.

at first, he talks about mundane things, because what else is there to say, really? even if sora is basically mute, he’s the best conversationalist here. naminé doesn’t really speak to him outside of status updates and DiZ isn’t even really an option. there’s no one else.

whenever naminé isn’t there, he sits down and talks to sora. it quickly forms into a routine, a habit that riku can’t seem to shake. he goes out on missions -- mostly recon, scouting out new worlds and keeping an eye on the organization -- and then he goes to sora’s pod, and then he goes to bed. it’s like clockwork. missions. sora. sleep. rinse and repeat.

time moves forward. the missions get more serious. riku starts wearing his blindfold. he has his first encounter with an organization member since everything that happened at castle oblivion. the darkness gets deeper. the darkness consumes more. the darkness makes his heart ache.

it’s a spiral that riku can’t fight against -- not if he wants to save sora. riku’s almost hyper-aware of the fact that he’s being manipulated, _just like last time,_  but he grits his teeth and bears it. if he doesn’t, if sora doesn’t wake up--

he doesn’t think about it.

as the world gets darker, so too do riku’s conversations with his sleeping companion. he bares his heart to him -- it’s not like sora can actually hear him. all his hopes, all his fears, all the lies that he tells himself so he can keep moving forward--

and the promise, no, the oath -- the oath he swore. sora will wake up. there’s no question about it.

the cost doesn’t matter.

riku says as much.

_“Whatever it takes, Sora. I swear you’ll wake up.”_

he doesn’t like threatening xion. he doesn’t. but he needs sora more.

spending time around her makes his heart ache. if she doesn’t make the right decision, he’ll have to make it for her. maybe it’s her resemblance to kairi, but she found a spot in his heart, and it’d pain him to take her down.

nevermind the fact that he wouldn’t remember it if he did. still, if there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s that memories never truly go away. his crime would still be engraved in his heart even if his head couldn’t remember the reason why.

he tries not to think about it. he’d do anything for sora, even stooping that low.

riku doesn’t know if it’s choice or obligation, the amount of time he spends around xion -- maybe it’s because she has some of sora’s memories, even if they’re the ones of kairi. besides roxas, she’s the closest he has to having sora respond to him.

she doesn’t act like him. she doesn’t act like kairi, either.

maybe it takes too long for his mind to separate xion from the being holding sora’s memories. maybe it was right to do so. every time riku returns to the pod, he puts his hand against it. even through the glove, it feels cold.

_“I’d give you a blanket if I could. Soon, Sora. I promise.”_

he’s out on another mission when xion disappears. the organization had come to take back their weapon, and though she fought, she lost in the end. DiZ says all the final pieces are beginning to fall into place. soon, xion will be nothing more than a fragment buried deep inside their hearts.

it’s one step closer to getting sora to wake up. there’s nothing riku isn’t willing to trade for sora, so he stands aside and lets everything happen. maybe that makes him despicable.

he can’t bring himself to really care, not until it haunts his sleep at night, at least. even then. he’d do anything for sora. he meant it when he said it.

just like he was told, the memories of xion are fading fast. he’s resting between missions when he’s told he has to leave soon to intercept roxas. he was planning on taking on the entire organization -- or what was left of it.

if it wouldn’t prevent sora from waking up, riku would let him go. roxas is sora’s nobody, after all. fueled by such a determination to make him even consider the possibility of taking them all down, he might be even tougher than sora. if anyone could do it solo, it would probably be roxas.

still. roxas has some of sora’s memories. he can’t risk the nobody getting destroyed.

riku gets as prepared as he’ll ever be for such a mission. when he goes to visit sora, he tries to hide the way his hands are shaking. he leans his forehead against the pod and takes a deep breath. gods, what he wouldn’t give to just hear his voice, to see his smile, to see sora awake and well. gods, what wouldn’t he give?

there’s nothing. nothing in this world.

_“I have to fight Roxas soon. I know I won’t come back the same. I’m sorry I won’t be there when you wake up, but I told you I would do anything, sacrifice anything. Even myself.”_

it hurts. sora always seems to be just out of arm’s reach.

riku leaves without another word, his blindfold tight around his eyes and his coat billowing around his ankles. even if he wouldn’t be there for sora, he wouldn’t back down on his oath.

the fight with roxas goes about as well as expected. riku gives into the darkness, takes the form of ansem. anything for sora. all of it was only ever for him. DiZ laughs, and riku feels a pang of anger at being used. he shoves it down.

sora will wake up. sora will wake up.

his voice sounds different, but it doesn’t matter in the end, because sora can’t hear him. it makes riku laugh a little bit -- he’s basically been talking to himself this whole time. still.

_“I would only go through so much trouble for someone I really loved. Lucky you, huh, Sora?”_

\----

sora’s memories of that time are always a bit hazy. in the beginning, he would get a headache whenever he thought about it. maybe it was a final fail-safe technique, but sora worked through it and rendered it useless. by all means, sora should have no access to these memories with how deep into sleep he was and the nature of that sleep. anyone else, maybe, would have forgotten.

sora is not anyone else.

so it’s hazy, but he hears this voice talking to him. it doesn’t take long to identify it as riku, but that’s about as far as he gets.

these memories usually play in his dreams, and they usually fade as soon as his feet touch the ground every morning. it frustrates him endlessly.

sora will be the first to admit that his memory is not the best, but this is something he wants to remember. this is riku. if he could just remember, maybe he’d be that much closer to finding him--

he clings to the dreams as proof that riku’s even okay. it’s fragile proof, but it gets him through the long days and longer nights.

still. on the worst days, he can’t help but to think his mind is just making these memories up in an effort to convince itself that riku is fine. everything inside sora always tells him that riku will be fine -- that riku _is_ fine -- that he’s not dead somewhere face-down in a ditch or a heartless. yet despite his conviction, there’s always that niggling _what-if_.

he’s trying so hard to convince himself that the things that the organization members are saying are all false. there’s no way riku would fall to the darkness -- not again.

when sora closed the door to kingdom hearts -- gods, it feels like forever ago now -- he knew riku would be fine, even if he was sealing him on the dark side, the side with all those heartless. even with the king, the odds were stacked against him when sora sealed that door. but he knew riku would be fine.

he knows riku is just fine, because he has to be. he doesn’t know what he’ll do if riku isn’t.

when the emperor of china offers him whatever he wants, sora asks about riku. donald and goofy don’t seem surprised. they shouldn’t, because riku really is all that sora wants.

and -- he very sorely does not want to be mistaken -- he thinks riku feels the same way.

_“Whatever it takes, Sora. I swear you’ll wake up.”_

from what he’s gathered about the situation from his time being awake, a promise like that doesn’t weigh lightly. subsequent dreams only confirm the notion. riku was truly ready to sacrifice everything.

of course, sora feels the same way. there’s never any doubt about that.

when they finally arrive at the base of operations of the organization, the moment they set foot on the other side of the portal, sora is struck with the feeling that this is it -- the culmination of his adventure. he’ll find his friends here, he’ll find his end here, he’ll find victory here.

it’s all in the palm of his hands. so he keeps moving forward.

when that hooded figure -- roxas, he learns later -- tells him that he’d beaten riku once, it positively enrages sora, far more than it should. instinct keeps his fighting from becoming totally sloppy, but he only wins that battle by the seat of his pants. roxas is tough, a formidable foe.

he’s surprised at his own anger, but once the fight is over it makes sense.

he’s spent so long convincing himself that riku is okay. roxas telling him that he’d defeated riku in battle threw all of that back in his face, exposed them for the fragile hopes they were.

he isn’t sure if he believes roxas. it doesn’t really matter.

riku is okay. he has to be.

_“Lucky you, huh, Sora?”_ (and that voice is off, yeah, but something in his heart is screaming that this is so, undeniably riku, and who is he to protest?)

and he is lucky, but is he really? when roxas fades away, sora’s hit with this unshakeable feeling that what he’s been doing this whole time is wrong. he’s too far down the path to turn back now, but he has to tell himself that the organization is a real threat so he can forget.

forget the look on demyx’s face as he faded away. forget the sight of axel prone in front of him, fading from existence. forget the sheer animosity with which roxas attacked him.

he shoves it to the back of his mind.

when he sees ansem for the first time, his stomach sinks to his feet. but then he sees the way that he’s helping kairi and not trying to kill her like last time, and it makes his brain go into an absolute knot but he takes advantage of the fact that she’s relatively safe and focuses on his own battle.

when kairi insists that ansem is riku, sora’s stomach does a little flip. his brain is instantly whirring at one million miles per second and a wave of dizziness hits him. that can’t be riku. riku said he would be okay. this doesn’t look okay. _this is what riku sacrificed… for me._

when kairi shows him the truth about ansem, all of it goes flying out the window and sora actually _does_ feel lucky -- and he sinks to his knees. he can’t stop the tears, not that he’d want to. riku tells him to get up, and sora doesn’t even have the energy to tell him how impossible it is.

riku’s not okay, not really. but riku’s here, and that’s all that matters.

when the _real_ ansem’s machine blows up, sora only has time to see riku jump in front of him before everything goes white. the explosion knocks them away and knocks them unconscious. when sora wakes up, he immediately thinks of riku.

riku took the brunt of the blast, and sora’s panicking.

riku’s not laying that far away from him and starts to come to as soon as sora reaches him, but he’s different, and--

when riku stands up and it’s _riku_ and not ansem, gods, sora could kiss him on the spot. he doesn’t.

in battle, riku is always putting his own safety on the line to ensure sora’s. for lack of better words, it upsets him. it’s not that sora feels babied, far from it -- he just wishes riku would stop. he’s already sacrificed so much for him.

sora knows he said anything. sora knows he meant it.

in the final battle against xemnas, it all comes to a climax -- riku takes a serious hit for him, and that does it. xemnas doesn’t last much longer in that fight. sora's glad it's over.

sora quite literally has to carry him, and it makes him want to scream. riku shouldn't be sacrificing so much for him, even if he -- even if he feels like he should, because he shouldn't.

by now, sora's gathered his memories and his dreams and made sense of them, more or less -- those are from his time in the mansion, however long that was. he can't remember why he was there, but it doesn't really matter now.

when he and riku sit side by side on that dark beach, nothing else really matters.

it's been silent for a while. sora brings it up tentatively.

_"When I was asleep… I could hear you, you know. All those things you said, I could hear you."_

he recognizes the look on riku's face. in any other situation, he would make some excuse and leave on the spot. but now, he can't. he needs help to walk, and sora's the only other person here.

sora feels a little bad for trapping him and putting him on the spot, but it can't be helped.

_"Did you mean it? Was that all true?"_

riku gives him this look, like talking about this is physically painful, and sora's about to shake his head and try to take back what he said. he doesn't get the chance.

_"I meant it, every single word. Those aren't things I could lie about."_

riku hasn't moved, but somehow sora feels like they're sitting closer together. he's reeling. he can't think of what to say -- what the right thing might be. he blurts the one dominant thought.

_"So you love me?"_

they're closer. sora isn't sure who moved.

_"Yeah."_

even later, sora still won't know who closed the gap between them. one moment they weren't kissing and one moment they were.

but it's nice.

riku's warm, and soft, and gentle, and this is everything he dreamed it would be, even more than that. sora wonders if he feels the same.

riku's eyes are intense. he rubs his thumb over sora's cheek like it's the one thing he's wanted to do for years. maybe it is. his voice is quiet.

_"Do you love me?"_

and sora smiles.

_"Yeah."_

**Author's Note:**

> I finally feel like one of those cool AO3 writers where their fic has no capitalization. It feels good.


End file.
